Walk Across Fire
by Mornen
Summary: A dark, depressing, rather disturbing argument over Finwë's upcoming marriage told from the perspectives of Finwë and Fëanor. Methinks I was influenced by Oedipus Rex too much. I have no claims to that wonderful story or any of Tolkien's works.


'_Her eyes and arms and skin won't make  
>it go away<br>You'll wake up tomorrow and wrestle the sorrow  
>That holds you down today. <em>

_Go on and hold her till the screaming is gone  
>Go on believe her when she tells you<br>nothing's wrong  
>But I'm the only one<br>Who'll walk across the fire for you'_

_I'm the Only One _– Melissa Etheridge

* * *

><p><em>Finwë<em>

_-o-_

He ripped his shirt off as he entered the room, tearing at the buttons; they fell to the floor with a slight patter and rolled away over the hard stone.

I turned to him in disbelief, and he stared at me with wild, wild eyes.

'I do not understand,' he snarled, throwing the shirt aside. 'I thought that you loved me.' He brushed the sweat from his body with his open palm. The smell of the forge was still strong on him, and I wondered how long he had spent beside the furnace, striking twisted metal in his rage.

'I do love you,' I assured him gently, holding my hand out to him as I stood.

He took it. His grasp was biting and fervent, his nails digging sharply into my flesh.

'Do you?'

His grip tightened, and I felt my skin giving way. I groaned with the pain, and his fingers loosened, falling open slowly. He took my hand and held it gently, staring down at the blood and sweat mingling on my palm. Horror spread across his face.

'I have hurt you,' he whispered.

'It is nothing,' I answered.

He caught my hand to his lips and kissed it repeatedly. 'I did not mean to. I did not want to.'

I ran my other hand through his dark, snarled hair, and drew his face towards mine, kissing the sweat from his burning cheeks, trying to still his trembling lips.

He kissed me back soundlessly, automatically, but his eyes refused to meet mine.

'I love you,' I soothed.

'Then do not marry her!' he cried, pulling away from me. He grabbed the ruins of his shirt off the floor and tried to pull it on, before throwing the rent cloth away in disgust.

'I love her too,' I stated.

'You cannot love us both.' He sank down onto my bed, holding his head in his desperate hands.

I sat down beside him and drew him against me, my hands caressing his damp back and strong arms; he felt so much older than he was, but he was only a child still.

'I can love you both, and I do. I love you both so very much,' I whispered.

His eyes fixed on me; they seemed darker than usual in the dim light of the candles. 'And what of Mother?'

'I love her too,' I said, 'but she will not return to us.'

'And so you would forsake her?'

'The Valar have granted me permission to wed…'

'And what would the Valar know?' he cut in bitterly. 'How can they even begin to understand? They who have never known separation; they who have never had to sit beside someone that they love who would not come back to them, someone who they were not even allowed to know.' He muttered something inaudible and tried to pull away from me.

'I love Indis,' I told him firmly.

_Why? _His eyes screamed the question at me.

'Do you not understand?' I asked. 'I have once again found happiness with her. I was not looking for it; I was not trying to forget your mother.'

'No, I do not understand,' he answered coldly. 'Why has she suddenly brought you happiness? I tried to make you happy. Was I not enough?'

I found no words to answer him, and took him instead against me, pressing his face to my chest.

'I tried to make you happy. I tried so hard.' His words were taut and deep, his sweet voice muffled and twisted by my body and his despair.

'I know,' I said, 'I understand. But she gave me a joy that I could find nowhere else.'

'I would have given it to you!' he cried, pulling away from me, but his hands still held fast to my arms. His eyes glimmered with unshed tears that I knew would never fall. 'I would have given you anything.'

'This was something that you could not give to me,' I said lamely, my voice soft and fading.

'I would have given you my body.'

I stumbled for words to say in the imperishable silence. 'But that would have been wrong…'

'And this is not?' He twisted wildly away from me, falling soundlessly to the floor. He lay there for a few moments, his body tight, his fingers shaking, then turned sharply to me, his eyes blazing. _'And this is not?'_

'No.' Yet somehow, I felt that it was.

-o- -o- -o- -o- -o- -o-

_Fëanor_

-o-

I stared at him in the moment that had become silence. Every cry that I had given him, he had let fall aside unheeded. I had offered him my darkest nightmares, and he had scorned them as my sin. Now he stood there with his arms tight and his head high, so pure and mighty above me. There was nothing more that I could offer.

'You do not love her,' I said, drawing away from him as he stooped towards me, concern and pity masking the horror written in his eyes. 'All you want is the pleasure she can give you for a few moments of your life. You would throw everything aside for the aching of your body.'

_'No.'_

'Do not deny it. There is no other reason; there is nothing else that I cannot give you.'

His grey eyes were filled with tears; they seemed ready to brim over, to cascade without regret down his face. Trembling, he reached a hand out to me, touching my shamed cheek with his condescending fingers. 'You.'

It was a full sentence in itself. And I knew already what it meant. In that moment, in that day, in that life, in forever, it would mean the same thing. I was not good enough.

I screamed, but I could not hear the cry. All I could hear was the echoing silence that surrounded the moment he had last spoken, stabbing me with his solitary word.

Darkness surrounded me, a darkness that none could penetrate. Light and fire had fallen away, and I was left alone floating in the cold, black nothing that my sins would drive me to. The fire inside my body that I had always felt and somehow understood had died away, leaving me empty, my body aching to be filled by something I could not reach.

My hair, I wrenched. My skin, I tore. Fighting the nothing that threatened to overwhelm me with pain I could not feel. My body, the floor, the nothing, the light, I no longer knew what I was and what was not I.

'My child, my son. Fëanáro.' The words came to me from outside the nothing, threatening to break my ears, which had already grown so accustomed to the stillness I had been lost in. I turned away from the sound, clutching at my face, trying to stop it from reaching me.

Arms encircled me; hands caressed me. Soft words were whispered in my ears, assuring me that I was safe, assuring me that everything would be all right, assuring me that I was not to blame.

But already I knew that I was.


End file.
